On February 13 voters in Switzerland turned back a proposal that would have tightened controls on firearms possession and use in a country where a large share of the homes have at least one gun and where learning to shoot and handle a rifle for defense of country (as well as sport) is a right of passage for every Swiss male.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is in a quandry: the government ministers of France have been taking vacations in the sand and surf of the southern Mediterranean and presidential palaces on the Red Sea, with the Egyptian government and a Tunisian businessman picking up the tab. How high does this subsidized vacationing go in the French government? Prime Minister François Fillon, the head of government in the Fifth Republic, and Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, second in precedence in the ministerial system, have both received gratis vacations at the expense of foreign governments or foreign nationals.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy both believe in global "solutions" to problems. How well does this play in Lisbon, Athens, Dublin, or Madrid? Portugal, Greece, Ireland, and Spain have had more than enough external pressures on their peoples in the last century.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel commented that Islam was just as much a part of Germany as Christianity and Judaism, she was wrong, apparently. Until it got caught, the European Union planned to distribute more than 3 million school calendars that included dates for the celebration of Muslim and Jewish holidays, but omitted Christian feasts. So for the EU, Islam was more a part of Germany and Europe than Christianity.